Help! I'm in Patchbay Hell

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Ginazgifs

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Hi Girls and Boys~
Our band has decided to go all analog to record our new demo, since our bass player already had a Tascam TSR 8, M312 mixing board, and a bunch of analog outboard gear in his basement,
But, unfortunately, I got stuck with the daunting task of hooking up the mixing board and recorder.

I know that I'm going to come off as a ditsy blonde, but trying to hook up the outboard and effects gear to the Patchbay and the mixer is driving me crazy! :confused:

I realize that hooking up a Tascam PB-32, Patchbay is more of a personal preference 'thing' and I'm not looking for any fancy patching ideas, But, just some simple & straight forward ideas on how some of you guys would hook up a Patchbay, given the equipment that we are using.

Tascam TSR, 8 track recorder
M312 mixing board
( I don't think we are going to route the recorder through the Patchbay since we planning on using the mixing board buss)

**Outboard gear**
Yamaha reverb (i think mono)
DBX, 163x over easy compressor
Yamaha compressor
Zoom effects processor RFX-1000

**Mixdown recorders**
Tascam (standalone) CD recorder
Tascam cassette recorder

I was trying to configure the Patchbay so that we could have the option to mixdown to either the CD recorder, or the Cassette recorder.

AND if possible be able record from the cassette to the CD recorder~ This is where I totally get lost trying to make the Patchbay thing work? :confused: :confused:

any ideas sample conjurations would help incredibly. Thanks :p everyone
 
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just think of it this way to keep it simple. All the parchbay is going to do for you is put the I/o of all your gear in one area so you can easily reach them. So for your purposes you would not be using normaled or halfnormaled. JUst hook up all the inputs on the top row and all the outputs on the bottom row, of course keeping some sort of congruency to the process (ie mix dow decks next to each other and so on). then anthything that needs to be patched would be right there. Now there are countless ways to approach this so I cannot go into to depth but one tip from an ease of use standpoint, is have insert cables to use for the comps out of the patch bay therefore not having to hook the inserts on the board into the bay, this would require normalled use in most cases and would probably be a little confusing if one was to not be a seasoned pbay user as it were.
 
I have a 38 tascam and 312b mixer setup here and I just never had the need to use a patch bay. I would get rid of it. Its not that hard to just go into the back of the mixer and patch a cord in where you need it.
Leave enough room in the back of your mixer from the wall to get to the back to do your patching.
I had two patch bays and got rid of both of them. To me they are just something to take up room and add to your cable costs.
 
I'm with you, I never used a patch bay with my TSR-8 and M308, Actually I never used a patch bay period. I remember reading that Alan Holdsworth doesn't either, although for different reasons, his take was they are just another degration of the signal.
 
hmmmm, very interesting

Thank you so much for all the input guys, and thank you for the links Tim :p

Wow, I thought for sure all you analog guys would have some sort of Patchbay hooked up to your setup. But, its actually reforesting to find out that its really not necessary to hook up a Patchbay to connect the outboard gear. I really wasn't looking forward to hooking it up, I really just want to keep it simple. At least until I'm more comfortable with all this new gear. :o

Thank you again everyone.
 
If you're running unbalanced connections, (which obviously there are SEVERAL OF with that particular tape machine,) shorter cable lengths, and less connections are better. Each foot of cabling, and each latching connector adds a bit of undesireable impurities to the signal. (Hell, you get enough noise from your tape. Why add more through your regular ol' signal flow?)

I would only pursue the patch bay thing if all, or most, of your signals were balanced. Then, a properly configured patch bay could give you TONS of flexibility while both tracking, and mixing, preventing you from constantly reaching behind your mixer, and fuggering things up, damaging cables, and connectors, and whatnot. Of course, this requires twice as many (if not MORE) cable snakes. (and of course, a bit more dough.)

You may just use the patch bay to wire up your outboard gear, and have all the ins and outs at hand. Then, run your insert sends to 12 patch bay connections, and your insert returns to 12 patch bay connections right below these, half-normalled of course, to allow for inserting FX, and/or compression into stuff easily. Hell, why not?
 
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